Ernst Stavro Blofeld
Ernst Stavro Blofeld was a master criminal of the mid-twentieth century, and an arch-nemesis of James Bond. Ernst Stavro Blofeld was born on May 28, 1908 to a Polish father and a Greek mother in Gdynia. Blofeld attended the University of Warsaw where he studied economics and political history. He later went to the Warsaw Technical Institute to study engineering and radionics. He then took a communication position with the Polish government, at the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. He began to use his position for insider trading, buying and selling stocks at the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Foreseeing World War II, Blofeld made copies of top-secret wires and sold them to Nazi Germany. Before the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he destroyed all records of his existence, then moved to Turkey, where he worked for Turkish radio and set up an intelligence organization. During the war, he sold information to both sides. After the defeat of Erwin Rommel, he decided to back the Allied war effort; ironically, he was awarded numerous medals by the Allied powers after the war's end. After the war, Blofeld temporarily moved to South America before founding SPECTRE. Plan Omega In 1959, Blofeld and his second-in-command, Emilio Largo, devised a plan, termed "Plan Omega" to hijack a new military V bomber, the Villiers Vindicator, by bribing the NATO observer on board to kill the pilots and redirect the plane to the Bahamas. Once this had been done, the NATO traitor was promptly killed, and the two nuclear warheads on the aircraft were removed. Blofeld's organisation, SPECTRE, then threatened to blow up a major city unless a ransom of £100,000,000 was paid. Unfortunately for Blofeld, MI6 promptly began Operation Thunderball, a striking move of which was to send a certain James Bond to investigate certain occurrences which were taking place in the Bahamas. He and Felix Leiter made friends with Dominetta "Domino" Vitali, a mistress of Emilio Largo who, after finding out that Largo had killed her brother, decided to betray the two master criminals. Largo was shot in the back by Domino during an underwater battle between the subarines Manta and Disco Volante. After this, S.P.E.C.T.R.E. was practically non-existant, although Ernst Stavro Blofeld was able to escape. Comte Balthazar de Bleauville After the events of Operation Thunderball, Blofeld underwent a complete change of identity, hiding out in Switzerland and assuming the name of Comte Balthazar de Bleuville. He had even undergone plastic surgery, so as to physically pass as a member of the de Bleuville bloodline. He even asked the Royal College of Arms to prove that he was the reigning court of the family. His plan was to, with his assistant Irma Brunt, brainwash a group of young British and European women to carry biological weaponry back to Britain, in order to destroy the country's agricultural economy, which, due to the Second World War, England depended on. The brainwashing was undertaken under the guise of curing the group of their livestock allergies. However, this plot was thwarted once more by James Bond, who had been working on "Operation Bedlam"- a mission to trace the remaining members of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Bond was about to resign from the Operation, when a woman called the Countess Teresa "Tracy" de Vicenzio, whose father, Marc-Ange Draco, persuaded Bond to marry her in return for a clue to Blofeld's Switzerland location. After this transaction, Bond, acting as a member of the Royal College of Arms called Sir Hilary Bray, infiltrated his lair on the top of Piz Gloria. There, he found out about Blofeld's plot to destroy Britain's agriculture, and escaped by skiing down the mountain. The house was then bombarded by an aerial assault led by Bond and Draco, although Blofeld escaped, and, as a final feat of spite, killed Tracy de Vicenzio- Mrs Bond- on the day of their wedding. Dr. Guntram Shatterhand After escaping to Switzerland, Blofeld fled to Japan, where he assumed the identity of Dr. Guntram Shatterhand, who ran a suicide parlour called The Garden of Death. This place, not dissimilar to Moriarty's Suicide Club a century earlier, was a place people went to if they wanted to die, or, more frequently, if they were forced to die. Although James Bond was assigned to assassinate this man, it is unknown whether or not he succeeded. Category:People Category:Pages Category:Rogue's Gallery